Synthesia cost per video minute: Starter $1.44, Pro $1.07 on annual
Synthesia's own conversion gives about 12 minutes a month on Starter: $2.42 a minute monthly, $1.44 annual. Sume avatar Standard is $11.04 a minute.
On Synthesia's own conversions, a Starter minute of video costs $2.42 on the monthly plan and $1.44 on the annual plan, and a Pro minute costs $1.48 monthly or $1.07 annual. On Sume, one minute of avatar video at the Standard tier is 60 x $0.184 = $11.04. Those are very different products, and the gap is the whole story of this comparison. Figures from Synthesia's pricing page, read 2026-10-03.
The Sume number is a ceiling, not an average: Sume avatar videos run 4 to 60 seconds each, so a minute is the longest single job.
Synthesia, converted to dollars per minute
Synthesia prints credits and then translates them to minutes: Starter is 1,250 credits a month, about 12 minutes of video, or 15,000 credits a year, about 150 minutes. Pro is 6,000 credits a month, about 60 minutes, or 72,000 a year, about 720 minutes. Dividing the plan price by those minutes gives the table. The annual column multiplies the per-month annual price by 12 because the page bills yearly.
| Plan | Monthly price | Minutes per month | Monthly $/min | Annual price | Minutes per year | Annual $/min |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $29 | 12 min | $2.42 | $18 x 12 = $216 | 150 min | $1.44 |
| Pro | $89 | 60 min | $1.48 | $64 x 12 = $768 | 720 min | $1.07 |
Sume avatar tiers per minute
Sume Avatar Video 1.0 bills per second at three tiers. The rates in the repo are $0.184 (Standard), $0.245 (Plus) and $0.55 (Max) without a product, and slightly higher with one.
Per 60 seconds that is $11.04, $14.70 and $33.00. Per 30 seconds it is $5.52, $7.35 and $16.50.
| Tier | Per second | 30 seconds | 60 seconds |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | $0.184 | $5.52 | $11.04 |
| Plus | $0.245 | $7.35 | $14.70 |
| Max | $0.550 | $16.50 | $33.00 |
Why the numbers are so far apart
A Synthesia minute is drawn from a prepaid subscription pool, so the effective price falls as you use more of the pool. The plan also bundles an editor, templates and a fixed avatar library, and the Starter plan has no API access on the page. Sume bills each accepted avatar job from a wallet, with an API, and nothing is bundled.
If your need is a steady stream of minutes in a studio editor, Synthesia's arithmetic is hard to beat on price. If your need is an API call that returns one clip per request with no seat to maintain, the per-second bill is the model that fits, and the 10-second case is only $1.84 at Standard.
Limits of this comparison
Treat the table as a budget bound, then generate one real clip on each side before you pick.
- Synthesia's minutes are its own estimates, and a credit-based pool can be spent differently.
- Sume's tiers differ in quality and turnaround, which the table does not price.
- Neither side is quoted for equal avatar realism, voices or languages.
Sources
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